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    Can this new voting system fix America’s ugliest elections?

    Marti Allen-Cummings, an activist, community board member and drag artist running for a New York city council seat in northern Manhattan, lights up when they speak about their competition. “I really hope that we have set the tone for other council races on how to build coalition and friendship with other candidates,” they said.With one candidate, Allen-Cummings cleaned up a park in the district last September. With another, they handed out PPE and campaign literature on the street. “Hey,” they would tell voters passing by. “Nice to meet you. Check out our platforms. There’s ranked-choice voting, so at the end of the day you can support both of us.”This is what proponents of ranked-choice voting (RCV) had promised. Under the voting system, voters can rank a number of candidates for each race – in New York City, up to five for every citywide contest. If none wins an outright majority in the first round of counting, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and their second-place votes are then counted, a process that continues until someone earns at least 50% of the votes plus one. The upcoming mayoral race – which is already heated ahead of November – will be one of the biggest tests for the system in the US.RCV, which New York City passed in 2019, offers many benefits, advocates say, like eliminating costly and low-turnout runoffs, allowing voters to choose their favorite candidate without fear of wasting their vote, and ensuring that the winner has majority support. For those reasons, the bipartisan reform has become increasingly popular in the past decade. As of recently, it’s how Maine and Alaska vote for president, how Republicans in Virginia choose their candidate for governor, and the way to elect school boards in Cambridge, Massachusetts, municipal judges in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and mayors in cities across Utah. In total, nearly 10 million voters in the US now use RCV.But does it also lead to more civil campaigns?Though civility is difficult to measure, researchers have taken two approaches. The first is to analyze how the candidates speak to and about their competition. In the mayoral debates studied, candidates under RCV “substituted negative or neutral words for more positive words”. The second approach is to ask the voters themselves, and those in New Mexico and California seem to agree: RCV campaigns are significantly less negative.But voters’ impressions are often unreliable, and RCV has never been used in a city so large, diverse and known for mudslinging as New York.In last week’s mayoral debate, Andrew Yang, the tech entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, turned to another frontrunner, Eric Adams. “We all know that you’ve been investigated for corruption everywhere you’ve gone,” Yang said. “You’ve achieved the rare trifecta of corruption investigations.”Another candidate, Scott Stringer, said to Yang: “As your consultants have told you time and time again, they admit you are an empty vessel. I actually don’t think you are an empty vessel. I think you are a Republican who continues to focus on the issues that will not bring back the economy.”But it’s not just the mayoral candidates. Though city council races aren’t as uniformly positive as Allen-Cummings’ enthusiasm would suggest, the most aggressive attacks haven’t come from the candidates.“The status quo of hostile campaigning is so deep that, even if it’s not necessarily the campaign itself [doing it], we’ve seen outside groups and independent expenditures being used to do that,” says Elizabeth Adams, a candidate in district 33 in Brooklyn who says she’s done RCV trainings and flyering with the three other female candidates in the race.Elizabeth Adams points to February’s special election in Queens, the first time RCV was used in the city. Leading up to election day, voters received mailers about Moumita Ahmed, a candidate endorsed by Bernie Sanders. The literature, sent by an outside group supported by billionaire real estate tycoon and Trump supporter Stephen Ross, accused her of “endangering our children” (advocating for cuts to the New York police department budget) and celebrating the loss of 25,000 Queens jobs (supporting Amazon’s decision to pull its HQ2 campus from Long Island City).On Twitter, Ahmed accused another candidate, Jim Gennaro, of orchestrating the attacks through a former staff member. Gennaro denied the allegations, but Ahmed was unimpressed. “Your amateurish, childlike behavior is not what voters deserve during a pandemic and certainly isn’t going to help you given ranked-choice voting,” she tweeted.Certainly, this special election, held in the dead of winter and with only 7% turnout and roughly 6,700 votes cast total, isn’t necessarily reflective of the city’s wider political dynamic. However, it does prove an important point: RCV means nothing if a candidate gets a majority on the first round.That’s what happened in the 24th district, with Gennaro taking nearly 60% of the vote and Ahmed finishing in second place with about 16%. However, even a modest initial lead is almost always insurmountable; 96% of candidates who are winning after the first round eventually win outright, according to data from FairVote, a non-partisan organization that promotes election reforms, including RCV.That fact raises a question: Instead of disappearing, will the city’s mudslinging just be outsourced to independent expenditure groups, which have already spent at least $15.7m on the primaries alone, 10 times what was spent in the 2017 cycle?“I am concerned about that,” says Deb Otis, a Senior Research Analyst at FairVote. “But I think over time, the independent expenditure groups in New York City will adjust to the reality of rank choice voting. They wouldn’t want their preferred candidate to be perceived as going negative.”New York City does have robust campaign finance transparency laws, which prohibit outside groups from coordinating with campaigns and require them to disclose their top donors. As for the candidates, going negative is a complicated decision based on a number of factors, like their position in the race, momentum, fundraising and public perception.Plus, there may be races that have more contenders than there are slots on the ranked choice ballot. In that case, one campaign may form alliances with a few others but has little incentive to play nice with the rest of the field.Still, RCV enjoys considerable support from the candidates, at least rhetorically. A spokesperson from the Yang campaign, which recommends that voters rank Kathryn Garcia as their No 2, said that he has supported RCV since he ran for president and that it encourages a “big tent” approach.Dianne Morales, the executive director of a non-profit based in the Bronx, also supports RCV, which “makes it possible for mayoral candidates like myself, a woman of color candidate for NYC mayor who has never run for office before, to level the playing field against career politicians and gives voters real choice in electing leaders”.However, as much as Allen-Cummings and Adams voice their support for RCV, Allen-Cummings hasn’t publicly declared their second-place choice, and Adams recommends only that voters rank women first through fourth in her race.But, a single election reform can only accomplish so much, and what RCV proponents promised was only that campaigning would become more civil.“I don’t see ranked-choice voting as the issue,” says Ahmed, who’s already noticed some candidates in her race cooperating more than they did in the February special election. For RCV to reach its full potential, she says, the city must enforce stricter term limits and prohibit spending by political action committees.“You can’t change the way human beings are going to operate,” says Ahmed. “So I think negative campaigning will always exist.”However, Allen-Cummings suggests otherwise. “I’ve laid out with all the candidates, like, ‘Let’s work together, let’s have fun together, and let’s help our neighbors,’” they say. “And for the most part, they’ve been on board with that.” More

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    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorses Maya Wiley for New York mayor

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed Maya Wiley for mayor of New York, a dramatic intervention that could heighten the chances of the city electing a woman for the first time and only its second Black leader.Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive in Congress popularly known as AOC, shot to national fame in 2018 when she beat a longtime incumbent, Joe Crowley, for the Democratic nomination in a district in Queens and the Bronx.“If we don’t come together as a movement we will get a New York City built by and for billionaires, and we need a city by and for working people,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Saturday. “So we will vote for Maya No1.”Wiley is a lawyer and community organiser who was a counsel to the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, and has taught urban policy and social justice at the New School in Manhattan.“She will be a progressive in Gracie Mansion,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to the mayoral residence. “We can’t let New York become a playground for the wealthy where working people cannot afford to live.”Wiley lauded Ocasio-Cortez as a strong leader and promised to do the same for the city.“It’s time we have this kind of courage leading us at a historic crossroads,” Wiley said, according to New York Daily News, referring to the city’s prospects after the coronavirus pandemic. “We need the courage to bring every New Yorker back with us.”This week Wiley told the New Yorker: “There’s one progressive in this race who can win this race. And it’s me.”In April, she told the Guardian she wanted to change a history which has seen New York elect 109 mayors – 108 of them white men, the exception David Dinkins, who led the city for three years from 1990 and who died last November, aged 93.For long periods the New York race has been led by Andrew Yang, a centrist tech entrepreneur who achieved his own national fame with a surprisingly strong run in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.After failing to land a place in Joe Biden’s cabinet, Yang entered the race to succeed De Blasio in New York.Gaffes and missteps including choosing to live outside the city during the pandemic, not voting for mayor between 2001 and 2017 and supposedly misunderstanding the subway system did not stop him dominating early polls.Democrats will choose their candidate – and in all likelihood the next mayor, given the political leanings of the city – on 22 June. The primary will be conducted through ranked-choice voting, which lets voters pick up to five candidates in order of preference. Some early results in other contests might be known that evening but the nominees for mayor are unlikely to be known for weeks.Polls have tightened, with Yang, Wiley, Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams and former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia the top four in a crowded field.Garcia has been endorsed by the New York Times. Wiley will hope Ocasio-Cortez speaks to young New Yorkers as the Grey Lady does to the city’s establishment.Hit hard in the early stages of the pandemic, New Yorkers are only now beginning to return to normal life. In her interview with the Guardian, Wiley said Covid “laid bare once again – like all our crises that reveal racial inequity – our failure to invest in our people.“… You know, 88% of New Yorkers who have died from Covid are people of colour. We are not 80% of the New York City population. The highest rates of unemployment are in the same communities that had the highest rates of death due to Covid. And the highest infection rates, and are the same communities that are over-policed, and are the same communities that are struggling to get the vaccine.“If we want to recover from Covid we have to pay attention to all our people. And what we love about the city … is the fact that 800 languages are spoken here, and the fact that 40% of our people were born in another country, and the fact that we have descendants from North American slaves, and the fact that we have people who live in luxury housing and people who live in public housing, and that’s part of what makes us rich.”She was also asked how she would manage the notoriously difficult relationship between the mayor’s office and Andrew Cuomo, the powerful Democratic governor of New York state.“I would manage the relationship with the governor the way I manage all relationships,” she said. “Open communication, starting with principles and purpose that meets the needs of people.“We have a shared constituency. There are many partnerships, we need to get what we need from the state government. And if you want partnerships that focus on hard problems and real solutions, then pick a Black woman. Because that’s what we do every single day and in every single way.” More

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    ‘More cops’: mayoral frontrunners talk tough in New York debate

    The New York City mayoral race exploded into life on Wednesday night, as the Democratic primary debate saw candidates clash over whether to rein in or bolster the city’s beleaguered police force, and the two centrist frontrunners found themselves variously attacked as Republicans or gun-toters.Andrew Yang and Eric Adams, who are leading the polls along with Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, were the focus of their rivals during the debate, as eight candidates pitched themselves to be mayor of the biggest city in the US – a role once dubbed the “second toughest job in America”.The winner of the Democratic primary later this month is expected to triumph in the mayoral election proper in November, lending an extra frisson to proceedings. But less than three weeks before New Yorkers go to the polls, the debate offered little hope for progressives seeking systemic change.Poverty and homelessness, which have continued to blight New York City under the last eight years of a Democratic mayor, were left by the wayside as law and order became an enduring topic.After a year where tens of thousands of New Yorkers called for the police department (NYPD) to be cut in size amid protests against police brutality and racism, it was Yang, a tech entrepreneur who ran a high-profile campaign for US president last year, who took the remarkable position of calling for the NYPD to expand.“We need to go on a recruitment drive” to hire more police officers, Yang, the early leader in the race said, in a statement which is an anathema to the progressives in the Democratic party. The NYPD is already the largest police force in the country, with a budget of $6bn and a staff 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian employees.“Defunding the police is not the right approach for NYC,” Yang said – a direct effort to distance himself from candidates who have called for money to be taken from the police budget and spent on social programs and mental health treatment.He later called for “more cops on the subways” – and said the officers should not just be a presence on platforms, but should conduct regular “visual inspections” of carriages.Adams, a former police officer who with Yang and Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner for New York City, has emerged as one of three frontrunners in the race, also staked out his position in support of the NYPD, linking crime to New York City’s recovery.“No one is coming to New York and our multibillion-dollar tourism industry if you have three-year-old children shot in Times Square,” Adams said, an apparent reference to a four-year-old child who was shot in the center of Manhattan in May.He went on to appeal to the city’s wealthiest residents.“When you look at our high-income earners, 65,000 people pay 51% of our income tax. When you speak to them [about] leaving the city, they talk about public safety.”Shootings in New York City have spiked in 2021. In the first three months of the year 246 people were shot, Gothamist reported – the highest rate for the first quarter since 2012. Murders in the city rose to 462 in 2020, according to the NYPD, an increase of 45% from 2019.Yang has spent weeks as the frontrunner, but Garcia, who has been boosted by an endorsement from the New York Times, has been gaining momentum as she bids to become the city’s first female mayor. Since 1834, when the mayor of New York City began to be chosen by popular vote, it has elected 109 leaders, every one of them a man, and only one of them, David Dinkins, a person of color.The first debate, which was held virtually in May, proved relatively civil, but with less than three weeks to go until the primary, things have begun to hot up, as candidates have spent $37m in TV advertising.“I don’t think you’re an empty vessel,” Scott Stringer, New York City’s comptroller and a progressive voice, told Yang at one point, referring to a description of the candidate given by one of Yang’s high-profile supporters.“I think you’re a Republican who continues to focus on the issues that will not bring back the economy.”Adams later noted that Yang left New York City during the coronavirus pandemic, and had not voted in several previous New York elections.“How the hell do we have you become our mayor with a record like this?” Adams said. “You can’t run from the city if you want to run the city.”Adams was attacked over his support for “stop and frisk”, the widely loathed policing tactic which proliferated under Rudy Giuliani’s mayorship and disproportionately targeted people of color.He was later challenged over his self-confessed habit of carrying a gun, which he is entitled to do as a former police officer. Adams has said he has carried a gun to church and claimed he would carry a gun as mayor to help save money on his security detail.Dianne Morales, a progressive who would cut $3bn from the police’s budget if elected, presented the case for curtailing law enforcement.“We can’t actually decouple the increase in crime, whether its gun violence or other crime, from the increased insecurities that New Yorkers have faced and encountered over the last 15 months,” Morales said.“I guarantee you that if we actually provided jobs to these young people and we actually provided economic stability to our communities then the violence that we’re witnessing would be dramatically decreased.”Lurking in the background of the debate was the near collapse of a progressive element to the mayoral race.Morales had become a favorite of progressives, but has suffered a spectacular implosion over the past week, which culminated in some members of her staff holding an unprecedented public protest against her campaign, claiming that she had failed to recognize their demands for fair pay and benefits.Stringer had won the endorsement of a number of high-profile leftwing Democrats, but lost much of his backing after he was accused of sexual assault by a woman who volunteered on one of his past campaigns. Stringer denies the allegations.That has left Maya Wiley, a former counsel to the current New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, seeking to consolidate the left-leaning vote, and in an email sent to supporters after the debate she described herself as “the progressive candidate that can win this race”.The polling, however, suggests otherwise. In the two most recent mayoral polls, however, Wiley came fifth and joint fourth, several points behind Adams, Garcia and Yang, and with much to do if she is to be elected mayor. More

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    US investigating if Ukrainian officials interfered in 2020 election – report

    Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating whether Ukrainian officials attempted to interfere in the 2020 presidential election to undermine Joe Biden and help Donald Trump, the New York Times has reported, citing unnamed sources “with knowledge of the matter”.The criminal investigation includes examining whether the Ukrainian officials used Rudy Giuliani, then personal lawyer to the former president, to spread misleading claims about Biden, the New York Times reported.The inquiry, which began during the final months of the Trump administration, is being handled by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, the newspaper reported, and is separate from an ongoing criminal investigation into Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine.One of the officials being investigated is a Ukrainian member of parliament named Andriy Derkach, the newspaper reported.The US Treasury Department previously sanctioned Derkach, identifying him as an “active Russian agent for over a decade”.Giuliani, who the New York Times said has not been accused of wrongdoing in this investigation, has previously denied representing any Ukrainians.The US Attorney’s Office and Arthur Aidala, a lawyer for Giuliani, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Giuliani’s business dealings with Ukrainian oligarchs while he was working as Trump’s lawyer are the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Federal agents searched his home and office in April, seizing phones and computers.Giuliani has denied allegations in that probe and his lawyers have suggested the investigation is politically motivated. More

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    Will rule of law succeed where Congress failed and hold Trump accountable?

    Standing in court, the former president pleaded not guilty to charges of financial crimes that he insists are part of a politically motivated witch hunt. Jacob Zuma, once the populist leader of South Africa, cut a humbled figure on Wednesday – and offered a potential glimpse of America’s future.A similar fate for Donald Trump became significantly more likely with reports that New York prosecutors have convened a grand jury to decide whether to indict him on criminal charges.The jurists will examine evidence gathered during the Manhattan district attorney’s two-year investigation into the former US president’s business dealings and alleged hush money payments to women on his behalf.There is a long way to go, but it is a sign that the long arm of the law may reach parts where Congress, in particular the Republican party, consistently failed by holding Trump accountable for his actions.Prosecutors have a decent chance of maintaining the perception of independence because the decision whether to bring charges rests with a jury of citizens studying evidence in secret rather than with Democrat Joe Biden’s department of justice.Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, will be sure to stay as far away from the case as possible to avoid any hint of political interference. If the jury goes against him, Trump would be the first former US president charged with a crime.This would surely produce the trial of the century, a fittingly Trumpian spectacle dominating every screen. Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general, told the MSNBC network: “I think it’s a potential sign that it looks like Donald Trump is moving on from the presidency to his next turn on TV, which is as a defendant.”A criminal conviction and jail sentence would be seen by America’s admirers as evidence of the rule of law – and by its detractors as the vindictive pursuit of a former leader reminiscent of a failing state.Trump is bound to play on such fears when he soon resumes campaign rallies. He said in a statement on Tuesday: “This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history.”He added pointedly: “Interesting that today a poll came out indicating I’m far in the lead for the Republican Presidential Primary and the General Election in 2024.”The fact that the message is tired and predictable makes it no less potent among his core supporters. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and the Democrats’ impeachment of Trump over his quid pro quo with the Ukraine, became regular foils for Trump on the campaign trail.When the rallies resume, expect to hear these golden oldies combined with some new material: how the 6 January insurrection was actually a fun day out with supporters kissing police, only to be hijacked by Antifa; and how the Manhattan district attorney’s case is a Democratic conspiracy designed to thwart any Trump reelection plans.Prosecutors cannot allow such nonsense to blow them off course; Trump will always find some grievance to weaponise. With the help of rightwing media and an acquiescent Republican party, it might secure him millions of votes but not enough to win the national popular vote and, current polls suggest, not the electoral college.A Trump 2024 election campaign depends on numerous variables: his age (he turns 75 next month), the lure of the golf course, how Republicans fare in the 2022 midterm elections, whether Republicans produce a viable alternative and how Biden’s economy performs. But the grand jury could scuttle it before it begins.In America, anything is possible. Four or five years from now, Trump might be back in the White House – or he might be in prison. Only the brave or foolhardy would bet which. More

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    Andrew Yang’s wife hits back over New York ‘tourist’ cartoon

    The New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, who has drawn fire for not voting in city elections and for having a second home upstate, was mocked as a “tourist” by some on Monday after naming Times Square as his favorite subway station.One political cartoon published by the New York Daily News showed Yang emerging from the station while a bystander quipped “the tourists are back”. Evelyn Yang, the candidate’s wife, was outraged.“I can’t believe my eyes,” she said on Twitter. “To publish this racist disfiguration of Andrew Yang as a tourist, in NYC where I was born, where Andrew has lived for 25 years, where our boys were born, where 16% of us are Asian and anti-Asian hate is up 900%.”She also posted a racist cartoon next to the cartoon from the Daily News and asked: “Which one is from 2021?”I can’t believe my eyes. To publish this racist disfiguration of @AndrewYang as a tourist, in NYC where I was born, where Andrew has lived for 25 years, where our boys were born, where 16% of us are Asian and anti-Asian hate is up 900%. #StopAsianHate https://t.co/pJ7JqxCUec— Evelyn Yang (@EvelynYang) May 24, 2021
    Yang’s campaign also fired back.“It’s hard to tell what offends [his critics] more – that his family has lived near that subway stop for 25 years or that he’s an Asian American,” said Yang’s communications director, Alyssa Cass.To Yang, the choice was a simple one. That’s the stop closest to his Manhattan home.“It’s my stop, so Times Square,” he told the comedian Ziwe on her Showtime program.The comic reacted with disbelief.Yang replied: “It’s big. It’s cavernous. There are entertainers there. Sure, what’s not to like?”Some on social media questioned how much of a New Yorker Yang could really be. Real New Yorkers, they said, stay away from tourist-choked Times Square if they can.The tech entrepreneur and former presidential candidate is among the leading candidates in the Democratic primary. Voting ends on 22 June. Unlike most of the other leading contenders, Yang has never held a job in city government and isn’t part of the city’s political establishment.That status as an outsider has helped Yang with some voters but he has also been criticised for his lack of experience, for spending time at his house in the Hudson River Valley village of New Paltz after the pandemic struck, and for failing to vote in the last four mayoral elections.Being a native New Yorker hasn’t counted for much in those elections. Huge numbers of voters weren’t born in the city. The most recent holders of the job, Bill de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg, grew up in the Boston area. More

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    Lock him up! Why is repeat offender Donald Trump still a free man?

    A sudden fall from power always comes hard. King Alfred was reduced to skulking in a Somerset bog. A distraught Napoleon talked to coffee bushes on St Helena. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia hung around the haberdashery department of Jolly’s in Bath. Uganda’s Idi Amin plotted bloody revenge from a Novotel in Jeddah. Only Alfred the Great made a successful comeback.All of which brings us to Donald Trump, currently in exile at his luxury club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Whingeing amid the manicured greens and bunkers of his exclusive golf course, the defeated president recalls an ageing Bonnie Prince Charlie – a sort of “king over the water” with water features. Like deposed leaders throughout history, he obsesses about a return to power.Yet as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell moves to kill off a 9/11-style national commission to investigate the 6 January Capitol Hill insurrection, the pressing question is not whether Trump can maintain cult-like sway over Republicans, or even whether he will run again in 2024. The question that should most concern Americans who care about democracy is: why isn’t Trump in jail?The fact he is not, and has not been charged with anything, is a genuine puzzle – some might say a scandal, even a conspiracy. Trump’s actual and potential criminal rap sheet long predates the Capitol siege. It includes alleged abuses of power, obstruction of justice, fraud, tax evasion, Russian money-laundering, election tampering, conflicts of interest, hush-money bribes, assassination – and a lot of lies.Let’s take these allegations one at a time. District of Columbia investigators say they have charged 410 people over the Capitol breach. Some could be tried for plotting to overthrow the US government – a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison – or even for murder, given that five people died. Yet Trump, who urged supporters at a Washington rally that day to “fight like hell” to stop Congress certifying his election loss, is not among them. He has not even been questioned over his indisputably pivotal role.For sure, Trump was impeached – but he declined to appear before Congress, and Republican toadies made a mockery of the process, voting to acquit him of inciting insurrection. In March, DC attorney Michael Sherwin said federal investigations involving Trump are still under way. “Maybe the president is culpable,” he mused. But updates about this key aspect of the affair are unaccountably lacking.Letitia James, New York’s attorney-general, last week confirmed a criminal investigation into alleged wrongdoing by Trump’s business empire. This inquiry is running in tandem with another criminal investigation into the Trump Organisation by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance. Alleged false accounting and tax irregularities appear to be the main focus.Yet these long-running investigations lack tangible results. Nor do they appear to be examining potentially more politically illuminating allegations such as Trump’s dealings with Vladimir Putin and Russia’s oligarchs, money-laundering via the New York property market, and the past role of disgraced Deutsche Bank. While claiming it’s all a “witch-hunt”, Trump may be happy for these limited inquiries to drag on indefinitely.Why, meanwhile, has Trump not already been arraigned on charges of obstruction of justice and abuse of power? Exactly two years ago, special counsel Robert Mueller cited 10 instances of the then president allegedly obstructing investigations into collusion between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia. They included his firing of the FBI director, James Comey, and an attempt to sack Mueller himself.Mueller plainly indicated there was a case to answer, but said he was unable to bring indictments. “A president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office,” he said. Even if that is legally correct, Trump is no longer in office. Merrick Garland, William Barr’s thankfully less Uriah Heep-ish successor as attorney-general, should be all over this. Why isn’t he?Trump’s well-attested attempts to induce Georgia state officials to manipulate November’s election count in his favour were a crime, Fulton County prosecutors suggest. If so, why the delay? Charge him! Add to the rap sheet allegations of the ex-president corruptly channelling US taxpayer and foreign funds into his hotel and resort businesses.Trump, who promised to ‘drain the swamp’, waddled knee-deep in sleaze. So charge him!“Special interest groups likely spent more than $13 million at Trump properties” in order to gain access and influence, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an independent watchdog, reports. This typified an administration “marked by self-interest, profiteering at the highest levels, and more than 3,700 conflicts of interest”.In short, Trump, who promised to “drain the swamp”, waddled knee-deep in sleaze. So investigate and charge him!Trump has much to answer for internationally, too. The UN says the assassination he ordered last year, without just cause, of an Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani, was an unlawful act – possibly a war crime. And if all that is not enough, then consider – from a moral if not a legal standpoint – the thousands of avoidable Covid-19 deaths attributable to Trump’s denialism, stupidity and reckless incompetence.It’s truly strange that in a land of laws, Trump still walks free, strutting around his fancy-pants golf course, holding $250,000 a head fundraisers, evading justice, encouraging sedition, and daily blogging divisive bile about a stolen election. The Big Kahuna peddles the Big Lie. What other self-respecting country would allow it?The dismaying answer may be that to lock him up – the fate he wished on Hillary Clinton – would be to risk another insurrection. That’s the last thing Joe Biden and America’s wobbly democracy needs. But letting him get away with it harms democracy, too. In office, Trump ruled by lawlessness and fear. In exile, fear keeps him beyond the reach of the law. More

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    ‘We live here too’: Tahanie Aboushi bids to become New York’s top prosecutor

    Tahanie Aboushi was 13 when police barged into her home and arrested her parents. At 14, her father, a shop owner in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, was sentenced to 22 years in prison for charges relating to untaxed cigarettes and stolen goods. Her mother was acquitted of all charges.“Every day throughout the trial, I thought he was coming home with us. And then the day he was sentenced, he couldn’t come home with us. It was just so abrupt. I remember asking myself: ‘Is this it? He doesn’t come home with us?’ That was the day it actually sank in,” Aboushi told the Guardian in an interview.She added: “That night, there was no dinner with my father at the table, and that this would probably the last time we had dinner with our father in our home for the next 20 years.”Now over two decades later, Aboushi is entering a competitive race to become Manhattan’s next district attorney – the chief prosecutor who possesses the power to decide which cases will be pursued in the financial capital of the world and the heart of New York City. It’s a beat that covers Wall Street and downtown Manhattan to the uber-rich avenues of the Upper East and West sides, to the bustling communities of color of Harlem and Washington Heights.Aboushi is an underdog, but is already the standout progressive in the race, having earned the endorsements of the leftist Working Families party, the Jewish Vote advocacy group, and progressive political figures like congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, congressman Jamaal Bowman and the actor and activist Cynthia Nixon.Outside a coffee shop in Harlem, Aboushi is greeted by Yemeni women in burqas carrying groceries. A car pulls up to the curb and a man rolls down his window to say “Salaam” to the candidate. The man is Brother Tariq, a director at the Malcom X mosque down the street. Aboushi shouts back to tell him he owes her a phone call.“This is the side of Manhattan that’s forgotten about,” Aboushi said at the Manhattanville coffee shop. “This is one of the reasons why I jumped into this race – because there are other constituents who have been hurt. And like, we live here, too. What about us? It’s a very heavy working-class [place] here, predominantly black and Latino. But you can see we have a good mix of Yemeni communities and Pakistanis. A lot of the the immigrant African cab drivers live up here. It’s just a diverse, beautiful community up here.”In a competitive race with seven other candidates, the odds are stacked.Aboushi’s most formidable rival is Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who clerked for Judge Merrick Garland, who now heads the justice department. If elected, Farhadian Weinstein or Aboushi would be the first female district attorney for Manhattan. While Aboushi joked that she and Farhadian Weinstein have already been confused for each other since both are women of color with ethnic names, she said she couldn’t be more different than her opponent, a millionaire who is married to a wealthy hedge-fund manager.“The fact is that we’ve had a DA for the last 80 years here in Manhattan that’s only ever been a white man. It’s been somebody that is part of powerful and privileged communities that haven’t walked in our shoes but tells us what’s best for us. We have the movement and the advocates. People are demanding change. We know we have to control and address crime, but we also know the system is very unfair and it is racist.“And so people want to know how we’re going to do both. And we can do both. I’m going to show them we can do both. That’s why I jumped in the race.”Aboushi’s hope is to succeed the current district attorney, Cyrus Vance, who announced his retirement earlier this year. Whoever is elected to the position of DA will inherit Vance’s investigation into Donald Trump’s taxes – a key issue in this race.“We know what Vance could have done this with Trump back in 2015. This was your career prosecutor and people wanted something to be done in that 2015 investigation and it ended up nowhere, right? So is it really somebody that’s never been a prosecutor that we’re worried about, or somebody that has always been a prosecutor that we should be worried about shutting things like this down?”Despite having practiced law for over a decade and running her own practice with her siblings, Aboushi’s lack of prosecutorial experience could be seen as a vulnerability in her candidacy, but she views this as a strength.“I’ve been on the other end of the decision a prosecutor has made,” Aboushi said, referencing her father’s prison sentence. “I know what it looks like on the ground and what it means to fight, to not become a statistic where you just get trapped in this cycle. And that’s the perspective that has always been missing from this office.“We’ve had career prosecutors. We can’t sacrifice any more of our families hoping that a person is going to see us as human beings and do something different.”We have the most diverse cross-sectional support system – more than any other candidateTaboushi said what she’s lacking in prosecutorial experience, she makes up for in lived experience. Her most high-profile case to date was against the New York police department, where she defended Muslim women who were forced to remove their hijabs to get their mugshots taken in arrests. She won, and New York City paid each woman in the case a settlement of $60,000.“I told myself, ‘What kind of kind of environment are these officers in that you can do that and feel so comfortable about doing it?’ It was one of first impressions in the courts, meaning the NYPD never had that issue come up with them before. Now, the policy extends to all New Yorkers.”She added: “What I loved about that case is it started with a high-school student – a Muslim girl who tried to speak up for herself and her voice was stamped out. It doesn’t matter what religion you are. To work through their arguments was an active changing of systemic racism and understanding that you are in a vibrant city of so many different cultures.”Aboushi hopes to clinch the nomination in the primary election on 22 June and she is confident she can win.“We have the most diverse cross-sectional support system – more than any other candidate. We can have a safe and fair justice system and accomplish accountability in a way that’s focused on rehabilitation and preventative measures. People trust us. People hear my story and read about the work that I’ve done.“And they know I’m not going to ‘otherwise’ them, and that we’re going to be open and honest about this process. And we’re going to be responsive. We’re going to ensure a safe and stable society for everyone.” More